


Role Reversal: On Throwbacks and Stabbing Old Wounds

by Silverinia



Series: Prompt Fics and Requests [5]
Category: The Good Fight (TV), The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Love, Married Life, Married af, Married forever, Minor Angst, Prompt Fic, So Married, and ever, as it does, okay I'll stop it now, yeah it escalated again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 07:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19246966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverinia/pseuds/Silverinia
Summary: 19. "Kisses meant to distract the other person from whatever they were intently doing" (Fictional Kiss Prompts by @knifeofdaudwall), requested by @leahheartdiane and @mlyash.(Warning: Title is almost pretentiously metaphoric and therefore, utterly misleading. I mean, I wouldn't put it past me to write a fic about a McHart body switch, but I'd have the decency to at least tag it as a crack fic.)





	Role Reversal: On Throwbacks and Stabbing Old Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the requests and I'm so sorry for the long wait. I really do feel bad about it.
> 
> Fabulously special thanks to my pal K, who had to go through a lot during the writing process of this and handled my anxiety and painful insanity like a true Queen. She said it should be a stand-alone, so here you go. She's an angel.
> 
> Reference to episode 1x02 'First Week' of TGF.

It was dark in their house when she locked the front door behind her that night. Setting her keys, purse and the small paper bag of takeout that she’d bought on her way home on the wooden cupboard beside her, she shrugged off her coat and hung it on the rack. The sight of his jacket on its designated spot caught her eye and made her frown; she’d figured that he still must’ve been at the office and had simply forgotten to lock the door behind him when he’d left for work in the morning, as he so often did. Old habits died hard and he’d spent the majority of his life in the safety of the countryside with no other people within the reach of a five-minute car ride and with that, a certainly much lower rate of burglary.

The frown still engraved in the arch of her eyebrows, she swallowed his name to keep herself from calling it through the house. He must have fallen asleep already, and she couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t exactly called it an early closing time at the firm tonight—a simple look at her golden wrist watch revealed that it was well after eleven pm—and he was working hard these days; too hard even, if someone were to ask her, which he didn’t because he already knew how little she thought of it.

And so, she took off her heels as silently as she could, took them off the floor, grabbed her purse and the small paper bag with her other hand and walked across the hallway into the direction of their bedroom, stopping shortly at the kitchen to put the bag of takeout on the kitchen isle. It looked like she was in for a silent dinner for one. She would put his order in the fridge for him to heat it up tomorrow, so it wouldn’t have to go to waste.

As she entered the bedroom, she stopped momentarily in the doorframe and caught herself smiling brightly at the tousled pile of bedsheets on his side. It had been a little over eight months since they had moved in together, but she had never stopped to appreciate this feeling of coming home to him after a long day of work like today, or almost impatiently awaiting him when she would be the first one to arrive here. She would catch herself peaking at her watch again and again in intervals of approximately thirty seconds while she would unsuccessfully try to use the time to answer e-mails or review paperwork from off-showing junior associates, and while she always had to suppress shaking her head over her own silliness in those moments, she knew that she silently loved it.

Being married to him and doing stupid little couple things, like heating up takeout or leftovers in perfect timing, so it would be ready exactly when she’d hear him twisting his keys in the door lock from the outside and to then brag about what a pleasant coincidence it had been in front of him when he’d join her in the kitchen to greet her with a kiss. Stupid little couple things, like coming home to an all set dining table with a lit candle in the middle, because he knew how much she liked candles.

Stupid little couple things that neither of them had ever thought they’d want in their lives, until they’d fallen in love with the way it had snuck into their marriage.

Diane’s front teeth sank into her bottom lip, scraping over it until she could taste her lipstick on the tip of her tongue. She shook her head, smirking at the pile of silk sheets while she licked the small, crimson red layer off her teeth. She almost let out a small chuckle at the sight of it but caught herself in time to keep it in hidden her throat as to not interrupt him in his sleep. Small, careful steps, her gaze still captured by him, she began to walk quietly into the direction of her shoe closet on the other side of the room, when—

“Hey.”

She winced, dropping her purse and shoes on the carpeted floor with a series of muffled but loud noises, and spun around, her heart beating furiously as though it was attempting to jump out of her chest as she caught the gaze of her husband, who sat on one of the sofas in the room, his face illuminated by the cool, aggressive light of his laptop.

“Kurt, what the hell!”, she shrieked loudly, one of her hands jumping up to clutch her chest above her pounding heart that she could feel pulsating through two dainty layers of clothing. Her widened eyes narrowed dangerously when she saw his lips forming a smirk beneath his moustache.

“Good to see you, too.”, he said casually, and his eyes left her face to look at whatever he was busy doing on his laptop.

Her jaw dropped before she stormed through the room to turn on the light before she went over to stand in front of him, her hands on her hips. She rolled her eyes when he groaned at the sudden intensity.

“At least turn on the fucking light!”, she yelled at him. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

He blinked up at her while his eyes tried to adjust to the brightness, and she took in his figure. Crossed ankles, his bare feet resting on the coffee table—he knew she hated it when he did that—, his laptop sitting on his thighs that were already covered by his pyjama pants, his white button up already traded for a simple, white t-shirt.

“I was trying to sleep.”, he said, once his eyes had seemingly calmed down. Her frown found its way back to her forehead and her arms fell limply to her sides at the obvious exhaustion she heard in his voice.

“And you thought staring at your laptop would come in handy with that?”, she asked him with an arched eyebrow, and he groaned again, his eyes dropping back to the screen and his silence underlined by the clicking of his fingers against the keyboard.

Exhaling heavily, Diane let her eyes fall closed, before she walked around the coffee table to sink down on the couch next to him. She leaned into him, tucking her stocking-clad feet beneath her and placing her chin on his shoulder as she breathed in his scent and looked at the document on the bright screen that bored into her tired eyes without having it in her to narrow her eyes to try and read it to figure out what it was about without her glasses on.

The typing stopped and he let his wrists rest on the warm surface of the edges of his laptop. “I was already in bed when they called me.”, he said softly, his voice faint as if it were echoing over to her from a parallel universe. “It’s urgent, they need this finished by tomorrow morning.”

He flexed his fingers before they began to fly over the keyboard again and Diane sighed to herself. One of her arms slung around his neck and her fingertips began to brush over his shoulder, while she turned her head to press a soft kiss on his cheek. She heard the typing stop again and raised her head to see him looking at her.

He was offering her a sweet half smile, but she knew it wasn’t genuine, could hardly be that with the bags beneath his eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead that stood out much more prominently than she was used to.

“Can I help?”, she asked gently, and he cast her a real smile, the dark green in his eyes lighting up for a split second, before he shook his head.

“I’m almost done.”, he said and turned back to the screen, continuing to type out his report.

Her brows shot together, and she tilted her head to try and catch his gaze again. “Then why don’t you finish it in the morning?”, she asked incredulously.

Kurt shrugged without looking at her. “Would you?”, he shot back and caused her to roll her eyes.

“No. But I was told before that my work ethics aren’t exactly what _some people_ would consider to be ‘healthy’.” She bit her tongue to keep herself from grinning at the way his face fell. She had him there.

He exhaled deeply. “Di, this is important.”

“Hey, you know what’s more important?”, she asked in exaggerated enthusiasm while she sat up next to him, tilting her head to try and get in the way between his eyes and the laptop screen. And she seemingly was successful, since he did still his hands and shot her a look of deep and utter annoyance. She loved it when he was looking at her like that. “Food.”, she declared joyfully, and her smile disappeared when his hand rose to gently push her out of his sight to continue.

“Oh, come on, darling.”, she whined, a small pout on her lips as she pressed them against his neck, before she whispered huskily into his ear. “I bought takeout from that life-threatening, unhealthy burger place you like so much.”

He didn’t answer but she saw him swallowing hard at the sound of her whisper, at the feeling of her hot breath brushing against his skin as she spoke.

Smiling mischievously to herself, she dipped her head again to place soft, wet kisses along his jawline, her free hand landing on his chest to draw nonsensical patterns over it. “Please, Kurt.”, she whispered in between kisses. “I feel like I haven’t seen you all week.”

His jaw tensed as her fingers began to dance lower and lower over the thin cotton fabric of his shirt until they were just about to brush against the waistband of his pyjama pants. His fingers suddenly curled around her wrist and he leaned away from the touch of her lips against his neck, forcing her to take in the solemn look on his face.

“Di, I really can’t.”, he sighed with little finality and audible longing in his voice, making her grin internally.

She shook her head. “Just let them wait, they certainly won’t fire you because of it.”, she argued and one of his brows flew up.

“You can’t know that.”

“Actually, I can.” She shrugged. “It’d already be on Twitter.”

His lips suddenly stretched in amusement, and only now did she realize how much she had missed this sight over the last couple of weeks. His hand let go of her wrist and it came to rest on her nylon-covered thigh, slowly running up and down.

“Tomorrow, okay?”, he asked, and the smile disappeared from his face when he saw the look in her eyes shifting from playful to concerned while she nibbled on her bottom lip.

He rarely saw her defeated. It was different with concern—she had her way of always worrying too much about anything and everything—but defeat was a whole other subject. Her gaze dropped and she stared at her lap, the sight of her suddenly letting him realize what an effort she had made tonight. Getting takeout she didn’t like but knew that he would enjoy, being quiet when she’d thought that he was asleep, offering to help him with his work for a family she despised to no ends…

Not everyone would be so lucky. To have someone who cared that much.

She looked up again, met his gaze and faked a smile. “Okay. Tomorrow then.”, she said in well-feigned indifference and he hated himself for treating her like that. As if he didn’t appreciate her enough to let her care about him.

Shrugging, she cupped his cheek with her hand and pulled him closer to lock her lips with his for a small moment of togetherness, before she leaned away to cast him another smile, brush her thumb over his cheek and get up.

“But I’m leaving the lights on, Cowboy.”, she called back to him while she was walking towards the hallway. “Staring at the screen in the dark is bad for your eyes and you’ll get a headache from it.”

He didn’t answer and so she didn’t look back.

Her feet carried her into the kitchen. She switched on the light and headed straight to the wooden wine cabinet that Kurt had made her all those months ago, to help herself to a bottle of expensive cabernet sauvignon. He thought it was snobby, her preference of buying things that were usually on the pricier side of the spectrum, especially when it came to ephemeral products like wine _(“Wine is supposed to age, you know? It’s not a short-dated product and therefore, not a short-termed investment.” “It is, when you’re the buyer in this scenario.”_ ), and still, he’d built a shelve for it when they’d moved in together.

And now, as she poured herself a generous glass, only to then place the bottle beside it on the countertop and stare at it, she couldn’t help but feel miserable.

It was silly, _she_ was being silly. It wasn’t like he was actively choosing to bail on her, he had work to do and a close deadline, and after all, if there was someone who was supposed to understand that, it was her.

All the times she had cancelled dates in the past for emergency meetings, called him on Friday nights to tell him that she had to break a prior engagement and wouldn’t be able to drive out to his barn because she’d have to be at the office during the weekend; she couldn’t count them, even if she had wanted to, which she didn’t, because it already made her feel bad enough as it was.

She knew that this had been one of the reasons why it hadn’t worked out the first time around. The way she had always prioritized work over her private life—over _their_ private life—had always been something that ended up causing him to doubt their relationship and later on, their marriage.

And while she knew better than to just go and try to take all the blame for that it hadn’t worked out, she still knew that a big part of her behavior back then had influenced his actions. The way she’d treated him as though she’d taken him for granted, until the matter of course had finally turned to stab her in the back.

She inhaled deeply and shook her head, let her fingers curl around the stem of the wine glass and took a big sip.

_No. They were starting over._

It wasn’t like that anymore. They’d changed and it would only poison it, the new life they’d built together, the changed way in which they were working for their marriage, for each other, to keep thinking about this. It would only undermine all the effort they were making to keep on overanalyzing this and to keep on dwelling on their past mistakes.

She swallowed another sip and felt the liquid rushing straight into her head, knowing that she should eat something because drinking on an empty stomach had never been known to be a good idea, but now, as she was standing in the quiet of their kitchen in the silence of solitariness, too salty fries and a salad that was probably soaked in canned French dressing, didn’t seem as appealing anymore as they had when she’d ordered them at the burger restaurant.

She didn’t want to be like that, like the stereotypical, lonely wife that would be in bits when she wouldn’t get to spend time with her husband. She didn’t want to feel like this because the fact that she was, made her feel even worse. But maybe it was the downside of being able to live a life where she would get to do stupid couple things with her husband. Maybe feeling like this was the downside of being happily in love.

And, really, who was she to complain about insignificant problems like this one, when she knew exactly that it could be so much worse?

She sighed at her own stupidity and swallowed more wine.

The liquid rushed through her in the internal warmth of an alcoholic beverage, but it only did that much until she couldn’t help but wonder if this was how he had felt, back then, when he’d been forced to get used to being stood up by her, to feeling left and lonely in this relationship. If this was how she had made him feel for years and years until it had finally become too much.

 _People do desperate things when they’re lonely._ She’d said so herself.

They hadn’t spent much time together for the past couple of weeks, apart from hastily saying goodbye to each other in the morning and sleeping side by side at night. She had been working on an important trial that she’d won today, and he’d had his hands full with sitting in on several job interviews for his department and with then writing reviews on them, besides his usual reports and sometimes, like today, emergency reports on short notice. But it was nothing compared to the way it had once been. She really couldn’t find it in her to blame him for this, for choosing his work over her again or for not asking how her trial had ended… or for the way his reaction to the loneliness she’d forced upon him had ended their relationship, back when things had been so much more complicated.

Her tongue ran over her bottom lip before her front teeth clasped it and pulled it into her mouth. Her stomach rumbled but she suddenly wasn’t feeling hungry anymore.

Bringing the glass to her lips again, she was just about to empty it, when she heard a soft click from the end of the hallway, followed by the noises of his bare feet padding over the polished wooden floor. He’d never been capable of reducing it to what they called graceful steps, but she’d gotten used to it, to mocking him about it, and now, she wouldn’t want to miss it for the world.

She placed the glass on the countertop before she felt him wrapping his warm and strong arms around her from behind, his chin coming to rest on her shoulder and she let her head tilt aside against his.

“Are you mad?”, he whispered softly, and she let her eyes fall closed. She remembered the feeling of having to ask that question too vividly, could still feel herself fearing his answer in the telling silence she used to hear from the other line over the phone when she would call him to cancel their plans again. The telling silence that had always been followed by faked assurance from his side.

“No.”, she sighed, and it was not even a lie. She wasn’t mad, just…

She swallowed. “Just missing you.”, she whispered.

Honesty. She didn’t know if it was harder to give or to receive it but couldn’t deny that she began to feel a little better, once she’d said it out loud. Like they were at least partly standing by the agreements they’d reached when they had sat down and talked this through, figured out a plan together until they’d realized that ‘together’ had been the only plan they’d needed all along.

His arms tightened a little around her and his head shifted before he pressed a kiss into her hair. “I’m sorry, Di.”, he said, and her lips stretched in a weak smile as she shook her head.

“It’s okay. I understand.” Her fingers curled around his arm, her thumb drawing small circles over his skin. “We can do it tomorrow.”

“Actually…”, he began carefully, and she felt her jaw tensing as she pressed her lips together, the movements of her thumb on his arm coming to a halt.

It wasn’t his fault. They wouldn’t always be able to make their marriage the highest priority, that wasn’t the way it worked. He-

“I thought we could do it tonight.”

Her eyes shot open and she stared at her wine glass for a moment of surprise. Then she slowly turned in his arms and looked up at him, her hands rising to capture his cheeks as she shot him a smile.

“Kurt, it’s okay. You’ve got work to do and that’s okay, really.”, she said, and he smirked, his hand stroking up and down over her back.

He shook his head. “I’m almost done, I can finish it in the morning.” One corner of his lips twitched beneath his moustache and he playfully tilted his head aside. “As you said, they can wait.”

A small chuckle escaped her, and she rose on her tiptoes to place a soft kiss on his lips. “That’s really sweet. But I’m not going anywhere, I can wait, too.”

“I know.”, he whispered, his voice suddenly lower than prior. A heavy exhale escaped him before he continued. “But you shouldn’t have to.”

He only realized the unintentional ambiguity of his words when a flash of pain flickered through the light blue of her eyes, shortly before she looked away and his lips parted guiltily.

“Diane, I didn’t mean—”

“No.” She shook her head and swallowed before she looked up again to cast him a sad smile. “I know what you meant.”

He sighed and pulled her closer, let her bury her head in his chest as he lowered his to inhale her scent. He’d missed her too, of course, during those past weeks. And it was as if it had waited to hit him with its entire force, up until now. Missing her. Just being with her.

“Come on. We should celebrate.”, he said, pulling away to meet her eyes and witness one of her brows arching up.

“Celebrate what?”

“Your case?”, he said, smiling when her lips parted in confusion. “I looked it up during my lunch break. Sorry, I forgot to call—”

He never finished his apology that night, was cut off when she pulled him down to kiss him tongue first.

Making out against the kitchen counter. Talking and laughing over wine and greasy takeout dinner at midnight. Making love until they fell asleep to the sound of the other’s breathing in the comfort of each other’s warmth. Stupid little couple things.

And they loved them, as though they had fallen in love with being in love together.


End file.
